1. Field of Art
The disclosure generally relates to the field of user interface elements displayed on a screen.
2. Description of the Related Art
A problem of placing functionality and/or user interface elements on a website is that they are often fixed and not easily discoverable and accessible by the user without being obtrusive or unnecessarily using up space. Some attempted solutions make it difficult to find the desired element in user interface. In addition, configuring more readily available elements for a user interface may require a substantial region of an existing website.
One attempted solution is to have prominent in page control elements. Many websites place navigational controls including search boxes at the top of the page, often grouped into a series of bars or boxes. This provides an obvious visual connection when the user first visits a website. However, a downside of taking up valuable screen estate when the user first visits a page and forcing the user to scroll to get to this content and then completely disappearing once the user scrolls down to read the rest of the page. The longer a web page the more likely it is that the top part of the page will be out of view for much of the time and the less effective the top navigational elements become. Furthermore, each website separately designs this feature and it typically is unavailable and unacceptable for a third party.
Another approach to this problem is the use of a persistent bar. Some websites use a persistent bar at the top or bottom of the page that stays in the same position as the user scrolls, thereby always remaining visible and accessible. A problem with this approach is that the bar now always takes up space which is disliked by many users. This fact has led to most such bars having a close or minimize button to allow users to hide or at least minimize the bar thereby removing much of the benefit of having it in the first place. This is an even bigger issue for third party services wanting to offer this functionality because they have to convince a website owner to give them control of such a persistent user interface element. Furthermore, having the bar always appear means that the underlying website will often have to be modified to avoid confusion due to functionality appearing in both the bar at the top of the page and being visible at the same time.
Another attempted approach to the scrolling problem is to place functionality in a box that lives somewhere on the page but moves with the web page as the user scrolls. In this configuration the box stays in the same relative position inside the browser viewing area. Examples of this include GEOCITIES scrolling branding (a transparent GEOCITIES logo positioned close to the right bottom corner of the browser window) and a YELP scrollable map which scrolled with the user as they moved down the page. The problem with this approach is that it is often considered distracting and unprofessional (e.g. with the GEOCITIES logo which only worked for free non-professional websites) or needs special consideration to make it work with a page design (YELP left a big empty bar on the right to allow space for the map to scroll). More recently GETSATISFACTION has introduced a small feedback button that always appears in a fixed position on the side of the screen which due to its small size is accepted and used by many website owners. Unfortunately this approach does not scale to larger user interface elements and also suffers from the duplicate user interface element problem described above.